On demand: Why it’s time to start focusing on Pension education

At Zest, we appreciate every employee is different.

From the financially savvy to Generation Z, opinions differ on how to handle money. Some will have built quite the nest egg, while in a world where the pound continues to struggle, some may be happy to spend their hard-earned cash on living for today.

Our recent webinar, Funding your future: Why it’s time for employers to start focusing on Pension education, is now available on demand.

Hosted by our fantastic Principal Consultant, Joy Waugh, we were joined by two industry experts, Matthew Gregson of Howden Group and James Bolton of EBCam, to look into how you can better educate your employees about a financially secure future.

During the insightful session, the panel dived deeper into areas including:

• What are the building blocks to having a good Pension scheme.
• What are some of the successful strategies companies have used to simplify pension education.
• How employers can help different generations with very different needs?
• What you can do to help fill the gap and ensure people know what they need for a comfortable retirement.

Different generations tend to take a different approach to Pensions. When it comes to the younger employees in that bracket, EBCam’s James Bolton had a brilliant piece of advice to ensure your Pension education hits home.

‘When it comes to educating the younger generation on their Pension, everyone lives with everything on their phone nowadays.

‘Try to get your people engaging with their benefits, engaging with their Pension via their phone. It’s an easy way to create more engagement and ownership.’

Fantastic advice, but what about perfecting your employee Pension offering? This handy insight from Howden’s Matthew Gregson gives real food for thought: ‘‘It’s all about trying to find that sweet spot. Where the balance of responsibility lies between you as the employer and the employee. Ultimately, that’s going to drive how much you believe you need to take the lead on how well funded it is, and how well employees engage with it.

‘In reality, that’s probably the biggest conundrum that most of you will need to solve, when you’re thinking should we pay more? Should we change providers? Should we invest in better education and guidance for our people?’

Some of the key takeaways from the session include:

• Translating any curiosities around your Pension offering into education, and helping your employees to better understand what’s what.
• With the average 64-year-old man having over £139,000 more in his Pension than a female equivalent, it’s important that employers start addressing the gap.*
• While contributions are key, a good investment fund is much more likely to better support someone’s retirement outcome.
• Your benefit technology can play a key role in making your Pension offering simple to understand, and showing the impact on your salary when amending contribution levels.
• Be curious, because ultimately, this is a factor of your time and money, not to mention your future.

To watch the webinar in full, watch our on demand recording below.

*Research provided by our Marketplace partner, Yurtle.